Håkan Juholt, the leader of the Swedish Scoial Democratic Labour Party resigned earlier today after several scandals, record low numbers in oppinion polls and a month of heavy critisism. Håkan Juholt has been the leader of the party for less than a year, being elected to replace unpopular leader Mona Sahlin last March in one of the most horrible and hilarious leadership elections in modern Swedish history.

More on this later.

PS: This just confirms even more that this party has turned into a party of clowns.

This really depresses me. If what was once the strongest and most effective social-democratic party in the world is screwed that bad, the humanity's future looks really bleak.

I'm not sure if you can extrapolate self-inflicted internal idiocy (which, admittedly, the SAP had been remarkably free of - compared to most of its sister parties - until recently, but that's beside the point) of a political party into a forecast of eternal bleakness for humanity as a whole.

I didn't follow this at all after they picked Juholt, who, I vaguely remember thinking at the time, seemes like a nice, if slightly eccentric, guy. How did he goof up?

Basically an expenses scandal.

Perhaps, but a stronger party leader could have brushed off the scandal and moved on. What's the underlying cause of the long-term disarray in the SAP? Is it the same disease affecting the Liberal Party of Canada?

Eh... the SAP has all kinds of longterm issues (some the usual stuff, quite a bit also relating to simply not being used to losing elections) and you can read pages about it on the 2010 election thread, but sometimes a serious scandal is just a serious scandal. And I think there have been other scandals (less serious? I've not been following things all that closely so may be wrong about that) involving Juholt as well.

Though it obviously the situation gets really bad if that sort of thing happens when there are also longterm problems. I'd add 'and if there are also factional issues' but that's a given in a social democratic party.

Eh... the SAP has all kinds of longterm issues (some the usual stuff, quite a bit also relating to simply not being used to losing elections) and you can read pages about it on the 2010 election thread, but sometimes a serious scandal is just a serious scandal. And I think there have been other scandals (less serious? I've not been following things all that closely so may be wrong about that) involving Juholt as well.

You're of course correct that it was the expense scandal that started all of it, but the final straw for Juholt was actually more of an internal affair about the shadow budget. Basicly the SAP first created a budget that they were planning to introduce to parliament, but it was blocked by Juholt because he thought too much money was added to social benefits, and that they'd be attacked for being a welfere queen party. The budget was remade and a more moderate proposal was introduced in parliament. It caused a revolt among left-wing memebers and the proposal had to be redrawn and a proposal quite similar to the first budget was introduced instead.

Now this would just have been seen as a power struggle within the party if it had not been for the fact Juholt lied and said there had never been a first proposal that he had blocked.

Pissing of the left-wing base coupled with record low polling numbers... no one survives that.

Actually I'd sort of compare the current situation of the Social Democrats at the moment to the Tories during the late 90's to early 00's. They're the old natural party of goverment who can't seem to compete with the new moderate opponents, are seen as backwards and old, have huge internal divisions. I'm sure there's lots of flaws in that comparation, but there are actually a lot of parallels.

One of the key problems with Juholt was that the man lied in a bizarre fashion and generally behaved very weirdly.

When the civil war broke out in Libya he immediately called for Sweden to intervene (while the government initially seemed reluctant). Then the government quickly realized that they should intervene and sent some fighters to take part. Juholt appeared to have been pissed off at not being sufficiently included in this discussion, so he suddenly announced that he would demand the fighters to be withdrawn (the government does not have an own majority in parliament so they needed support from the SAP). He used the phrase "it is now time to leave this responsibility to someone else" (yes, literally, without further specification).

This caused an uproar among established foreign policy people within the SAP, since it ran contrary to the Swedish tradition under SAP governments of participating loyally in these types of missions. After a lot of heavy criticism, Juholt therefore announced, in a face-saving attempt that we should send ships to aid the Libyan rebels. This was criticized since no ships were actually needed (whereas the fighters were).

What made the incident even stranger was that Juholt then not only claimed to have been consistent on the issue, but furthermore claimed to have been the only one to have been consistent on it.

He also claimed to have smuggled a printing press to the dissidents in Poland in the 80s, which turned out to be a lie.

He said that the majority of Swedish citizens have never experienced anything other than an M-led government, which is...odd, since they've only been in power since 2006.

He also claimed that his contact ad on the internet had received 800 replies which then turned out to be a lie.

After they finally sent him on a weeklong vacation in Mexico, he came back like a week ago to start over. He did so on defence policy, his supposed area of expertise. By saying that the defence policy instituted by the government was pushed through with support from the xenophobic Sweden Democrats, which was horribly done by them. It was then pointed out that the SD wasn't actually in parliament when the policy was voted on (it happened in 2005).

I think you mean SAP SD is a racist populist party, so them electing jokes are hardly surprising.

As to why the SAP elected Juholt, well... desperation. All the A-list candidates such as Thomas Bodström, Margot Wallström, Pär Nuder, Leif Pagrotsky turned it down. While people such as Tomas Östros, Ibrahim Baylan were seen as too close to Sahlin. Michael Damberg was too young and too right-wing. Veronica Palm was too young and too left-wing. Carin Jämtin (who's the intrim leader right now) already proved what a terrible leader she'd be as the SAP mayoral candidate for Stockholm.

That left Österberg, the moderate, inoffensive, parliamentry group leader who everyone knew would make no-one excited but who'd not cause any great scandals either, and Juholt.

I think you mean SAP SD is a racist populist party, so them electing jokes are hardly surprising.

Sorry for the confusion. I actually knew about that, but I like to refer to the SAP as "the Social Democrats" so SD comes naturally. Further reason why the actual SD should be wiped off Sweden (apart from the fact they are far-right nuts).

Logged

RIP Greece. RIP European Federalism.

"It's easy to confuse what is with what ought to be, especially when what is has worked out in your favor."

It should also be noted that Juholt himself, hilariously, explained just before he became leader that he wouldn't be party leader because he was too rash, disorganized and gaffe-prone to handle it (or words to that effect).

That quote was recycled quite a bit once the scandals started coming...

Anyway, they seem to be going for Löven now. Which is an improvement. Not an actual politician, but a trade unionist. Seems centrist and sensible. He's supposedly interim until 2013 but they can't really change leaders that late in the game anyway, can they?

It's another gamble, not sure they can afford that at the moment. He's as unknown as Juholt, even more unvetted and has never held any position of political leadership. Granted he seems stable, but then back in March both you and I were saying Juholt seemed like a decent choice, although a bit goofy.

This whole business is sort of sad. In the past year the Greens, the Centre Party, and the Left Party (the three doesn't add up to the sieze of the SAP at its weakest when combined) has managed to find new leaders that are all more competent, more experienced, and more charismatic than the ones this party is even considering.